24 March 2006

BOMB HOAXERS ARE SCHOOL KIDS

Members of the ATO arrive at the bottom of Fahan Street after the discovery of the suspect package

SCHOOL KIDS are being blamed for bringing parts of the Bogside to standstill for more than three hours yesterday and for the hoax bomb attack on the home of SDLP MLA, Pat Ramsey, earlier this week.Sinn Fein Colr. Peter Anderson said those behind the incidents 'represented no one'.British Army bomb disposal experts were called to Fahan Street yesterday where a suspicious object had been discovered. A controlled explosion was carried out on the object which was later described as an "elaborate hoax."The road was re-opened to traffic shortly after 12.30pm. During the security alert, residents of nearby St. Joseph's Place were advised to stay at the front of their houses.Condemning yes-terday's bomb scare, Councillor Peter Anderson said that he believed that young people were to blame for placing the hoax device in a bid to lure security forces into the area to attack them."In my view, the people responsible for this are young people, possibly young school-children. They represent no-one and the only people they are hurting are the people in Fahan Street, including many elderly people, and the people of the Bogside. A few days age we had the hoax bomb outside Pat Ramsey's house which caused problems not only for the Ramsey family but also for people living in the surrounding area."I would imagine that the same people responsible for causing the hoax outside the Ramsey house are the same people who left this hoax in Fahan Street. I also believe that these are the same people who have been attacking the Fountain."Now that republicans and local residents have set up a rota which has stopped the majority of attacks on the Fountain, the young people who are involved in those attacks are now trying to lure the police and the army into the area to attack them," he said.Councillor Ander-son also said that those responsible for the series of hoax bombs could not claim to be republicans."The element who are carrying out this type of thing probably think they are republicans. Most likely they are young people and my advice to them, given the fact that we are approaching the 90th anniversary of the Easter Rising, would be to look in their school books and read the Proclamation and hang their heads in shame," he said.SDLP MLA Mary Bradley also condemned the incident and said that the people who planted the hoax device showed "contempt" for residents of the area. "I have nothing but total condemnation for this attack. This is the second hoax attack we have seen in recent days and I had hoped that we had left this type of thing in the past. This is a residential area and it is also an area that is used by pedestrians on their way to and from the town."The people who left this hoax in Fahan Street probably wanted to attract the security forces into the area because they think it is fun to throw petrol bombs and paint bombs at them but I can say that it is certainly not fun for the people living in Fahan Street to have their street cordoned off and traffic disrupted because of a bomb scare.